Kenya 'Samaj': Indian Merchants, Community Life, and Urban Society
KENYA ‘SAMAJ’: INDIAN MERCHANTS, COMMUNITY LIFE, AND URBAN SOCIETY IN COLONIAL EAST AFRICA, C. 1890-1980 By Misha A. Mintz-Roth A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland May 2019 ABSTRACT Much scholarship about Indian populations in East Africa examines their histories through categories of race and class. Immigrant groups, according to these narratives, are often seen as agents of the British Empire or as a minority racial diaspora that experienced marginalization during the colonial and post-independence periods. This dissertation takes a different approach. Examining Indians as interconnected yet separate vocational populations, it argues that Indian immigrants played a central role in making Kenya’s colonial economy, urban society, and post- independence political order. Indian merchants—the focus of this dissertation—assumed positions of economic, social, and political prominence in Kenya, building up household wealth by situating themselves between African agrarian societies, the territory’s urban markets, and the colonial state. Despite the rise of anti-Indian sentiment during the colonial period and after independence, Indian merchants cultivated linkages to new political leaders and activated longer-standing communal connections to re-assimilate into Kenya’s post-independence environment. Community networks, I argue, not race or nation, became the primary mode of belonging among Indian merchants in twentieth century Kenya, as they migrated, settled, and accumulated wealth, among other goals. This dissertation examines a diversity of historical sources, including traders’ diaries, merchants’ memoirs, court records, commercial contracts, newspapers, and records from the Kenya and India National Archives.
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